This blog will post detailed news items about GLBT issues. Some of the issues include the "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and gay marriage. Please note that my main website is DOASKDOTELL.COM (link on my Profile).

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About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Gay marriage as a fundamental right should not be seen as counter to "the common good"

As I noted on my main (“Bill Bousha”) blog today, a liberal pastor in
Arlington VA Sunday, speaking in part about the recent school tragedy in
Newtown, CT, said that people should give up some of their “cherished rights”
(or “fundamental rights”) for the good of others, or at least deploy their
rights in a way that doesn’t harm others.

In the LGBT area, I have some reservations when I hear a
statement like this, at least in its first formulation. Social “conservatives” use the “common good”
to shoot down the idea of equal rights of gays and lesbians to marry the adult
partners of their (consenting) choice.
They say that if heterosexual marriage is not revered in a special way
as an institution (to the point that the unmarried sometimes sacrifice for it),
then men and women will have less incentive to marry or to stay married long
enough to raise children.

Younger heterosexual adults are certainly backing away from
that view. But we should remember that
in earlier decades, there was a similar attitude to allowing gays to engage in
their own chosen sexual behaviors with other adults in private.

Given the modern debate on sustainability (ranging from
climate change to “demographic winter” and an aging population), we may see a
renewed emphasis on the idea that raising children is everyone’s
responsibility. President Obama has even
hinted at this interpretation in his remarks about Newtown. Given that the
evidence of biological explanations for same-sex attractions in otherwise fully
“normal” (I hate to punt to that word) adults, the policy debate will have to
gravitate to looking at how gay people should be involved in family
responsibility, ranging from eldercare to adopting children or helping raise
other people’s children. This debate is
coming and needs to happen. I don’t
think we should deliberately conceive children (in surrogacy) with the
intention of taking them from their mothers.

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